I'm not going to link to it

[james_davis_nicoll]

Because I think doing so could have the undesirable effect of facilitating hostile attention on a community I like but I will say Artcomm is making me consider adding "everything is worse with doctrinaire polyamorists" to my list of tags. oh, except it's too long to be a tag. Bother. And so is " if you were more evolved you'd agree with me."

Comments

[wild_irises]

A nice antidote here here (though she gets some legitimate criticism in the comments)

[thejeopardymaze]

It’s much harder to be jealous when your partner is saying, “I totally understand,” than it is when your partner is saying, “What the hell is the matter with you?”

Really?

I also tend to see sentences like that as an attempt at manipulation, with one individual pretending to be the more 'rational' and faking understanding while manipulating the other partner in to settling for a type of relationship that deep down they know will never fully work for them. ETA: I seem to have misread it a bit here, it actually reads more like she doesn't know what she talks about regarding the appeal of monogamy, however, I still think claiming to understand can be used to be manipulative, call me paranoid.

At least, that's how I'm reading in to this one.


Straight up, monogamy is the Western societal default.

Unless they're men. A bit too much of the poly community loves to ignore double standards and the problem of male privilege. Which is convenient for some of the people in the community, so they can cook up bullshit to manipulate women for that kind of relationship.

This isn't to say I'm against swingers and poly types and lifestyles, I just don't care how far too much of these poly arguments are framed, I'd rather they just say some people are meant for that lifestyle, some are not, and we shouldn't judge either way. Our society doesn't teach people about the reality of relationships, how to identify abusive personalities, and so on, so I'm really not impressed with this crap (let's just say the past year or so was rather an eye opener for me after reading up on emotional abuser tactics, especially when its used against women).

[james_davis_nicoll]

I was unclear. I don't object to poly, just fanatical wingnuts.

[thejeopardymaze]

I don't object to poly

I never got that impression. :)

[thejeopardymaze]

Ah, I misread, nevermind.

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

This is just to say
That I have been poly
Since 1986
And still have
No clue what I am doing
Most of the time.

:-)

[redbird]

I have some clue of what I'm doing, but what I'm doing is specifically what works for me and a specific few other people. And what's generalizable is both very general, and hardly poly-specific: get involved with people you respect, treat them in ways that show that respect, and do your best to communicate with them about things that matter.

[pauldrye.livejournal.com]

My motto has become "I have a hard enough time running my own life, I'm not about to start running anyone else's".

[redbird]

Nicely put. I will offer specific people advice if they ask. (I'll offer more people advice on minor, factual things, like "what's a good train to take to Chinatown?")

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'd pretty much totally agree with that. But it didn't scan as well. :-)

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Indeed. I've been in a triad (all living together) since 2004, and the only thing I know with great certaintly about poly, is that it takes more time and more communication than most people could possibly imagine.

[kd5mdk.livejournal.com]

Does "everything is worse with doctrinaire X" fit?

[iclysdale.livejournal.com]

Are you dissing Enver Hoxha (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enver_Hoxha), yo?

[kd5mdk.livejournal.com]

They had an opportunity to be Portugal without him...

[kayshapero]

Doctrinaire+noisy.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

Are you familiar with dot_poly_snark?

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

I was just going to say!

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I am now!

[agent-mimi.livejournal.com]

I had similar feelings back when I had a larger LiveJournal friendslist. There were 2 people who posted daily -- and that is not hyperbole, I promise -- about how they were more evolved than monogamists. Their comments about asexuals and transpersons were downright offensive. Both had dozens of friends who would agree with them, which meant I often saw up to 50 people a day saying wholly offensive things about everyone else's sexuality.

To be fair, I've seen similar phenomena with libertarians, atheists, childless/childfree, and Kibologists.

[ms-danson.livejournal.com]

What is a kibologist?

[agent-mimi.livejournal.com]

My standard answer is "You don't want to know," but I'll be good: Someone who posts/posted on alt.religion.kibology on Usenet. The Wikipedia article has been written by those who have deemed themselves "most prominent members", so that tells you a little bit about the kind of people they can be.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

The group was basically just subject to the usual geek social fallacies, abetted by the merry-prankster ethos. They weren't all assholes, but there was extreme toleration of assholes.

[agent-mimi.livejournal.com]

The further away I get from ARK, the more I realize how extremely problematic it was. I'm not just talking about the pseuicide, which I figure everyone thinks has colored my memories of Kibology, yet which in reality doesn't matter in my overall impression of ARK and how many Kibologists behaved. People were valued as commodity in a deliberate effort to form a hierarchical culture; in retrospect, it's surprising that someone didn't come up with some kind of numerical cataloging technique to place an actual worth on each poster/regular. And the biggest trolls claimed to do it for the lulz, but in reality did it to spread this hierarchy to other areas of the 'net, indulging their compulsion to judge everyone they encountered. The end result was humor that unfortunately often disguised bigotry and an inability to form appropriate relationships within a group.

The sheer amount of toxic people ARK attracted has been unparalleled in any other forum I've been to with the exception of one anonymous one; that said, on the anon forum, it would be impossible for me to tell how many of those anonymouses are really one person pretending to be several.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I had a privileged view of the whole thing, having gotten into a central position more or less by accident. The competitive element energized me to write funny stuff back then, but at the cost of denying the ugly aspects of it to myself.

I remember the time Sam managed to cheese off a bunch of regulars by having the gall to suggest that a particularly antisocial cross-group trolling session was not OK. One of them told me to give her a good talking-to and set her straight, apparently without realizing we were dating (but it would have been pretty creepy regardless). It was one of the very few times I actually flew off the handle.

[submarine-bells.livejournal.com]

Artcomm takes me back to the good ole days of Your Pal Tal, only without Tal's social skills. :-7

[trinker.livejournal.com]

@.@ Oh. Dear.

[submarine-bells.livejournal.com]

Well, say what you like about Tal (and most folk have, at some point or another), but he did have some social skills. Admittedly they weren't as stellar as they might have been; but you could hold an actual conversation with him, and he did make an effort to actually participate in the group beyond just posting the poly-superiority-wiv-fantasy-prehistoric-anthropology stuff that he liked so much. So there was that. Not that I miss him on a.p or anything, but one could at least hold an actual discussion with him now and then, unlike this current clown. *sigh*

[trinker.livejournal.com]

I remember Tal as being...cheerfully, clue-resistantly invasive, on the social end.

But yes, there was something more than just "poly iz KEWL, mono droools!" there.